o
they plotted to salt a claim or two and swindle me a bit, their own
prospecting of the ground revealing nothing at all. The whole mountain
side is covered with slide-rock and there is no mineral in sight. So,
calculating that a fool cowpuncher knew nothing about geology and so
would bite at anything he could see with his own eyes, they stole a lot
of rich ore from the Bonanza, over at Breckenridge, and salted her up
good! As it happened, they chose the very claim I wanted to file on, the
apex, and so I had to buy them out. I never came in contact with either
of them at all; I bought it through a mining broker. But for a whole day
I watched them through my field glasses salting the ground. The funny
part of it is that by a very little work--Olsen is a good man with a
drill and powder, you know--they did enough linear shafting to enable me
to patent the ground. And in the five months that I have been at work on
the extensions I have done enough work on each of them to patent them
also. That's what I wanted this six hundred for. In ten days I'll have
them patented, too, and then no one can jump them or cause me any
trouble when I come to work the leads which I am sure lie under my apex
claims."

On the first of the new year he received his patents from Washington;
and in the interim he had secured work that promised to put him in
sufficient funds to prosecute developments on his mining claims.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SONG OF THE WOLF

The next morning, yielding to McVey's urgencies, he consented to take
part in the fall round-up just at hand, working in the interests of the
C Bar outfit.

In the ensuing days of strenuous toil he worked harder than he had ever
done before in all his range experience, spurred with the idea that he
owed Carter some reparation for leaving his service so unceremoniously,
and his staunch yeomanry appealed particularly to Anselm Brevoort, who
had run out to see a rodeo and have a month's hunt with Carter. As the
best hunter among the C Bar men it naturally devolved upon Douglass,
after the range work was done, to act as guide to Brevoort and the
ladies, who developed a great interest in the sport.

It was upon one of these trips that Brevoort casually mentioned his
temptation to buy a ranch as an investment, asking Douglass's advice in
the matter. The latter expressing some diffidence in the premises,
Brevoort brought the point in issue to a definite focus by asking him if
he thought